bla bla yoga bla bla breath bla bla practice

Main menu

The (False) Promises of Yoga

These days yoga classes are fantastic, yoga workshops are splendid, the experience of yoga is divine, the yoga people you meet are magnificent, the flow is sensational, the smell of the food is out of this world, the mats are excellent, the tea, well, of course it is what yoga gods drink, the mat cleaning spray is simply mega, the shoe rack at the shala is breathtaking… Boy! FFS! Can’t we just do yoga, teach classes, workshops and let others decide what it was they felt or thought about the whole thing, after the thing has actually happened.

I know that advertisement and marketing are realities of capitalism* and it is a hard enough life for yoga teachers as it is but do the adverts have to sound so vulgar? How about some genuine intention to teach yoga and enjoy it?

These over the top adjectives are supposed to signify rare moments where the ordinary falls short to describe. Just because you say something is going to be marvellous, that thing doesn’t become marvellous. Honestly, I think it is shameless self-promotion and I don’t buy a word of it; they are all polished promises by people who probably lack basic honesty. I instantly hate the whole possibility of participating in any such organisation or believing anything such people have to say.

“Yoga ignites the inner fire of purification which shines as the lamp of knowledge, revealing the truth in its simplicity. Slowly, methodologically yoga will illuminate all the shadows until nothing but the brilliance of the inner light remains” (Kino McGregor on IG)

The above quote is just an example to show what I mean by false promises. I don’t particularly care about what Kino McGregor does or does not. Again, I am just using her words as an example here and she is by no means the only one. All I am saying is that I am so deeply and so majestically bored with such yoga promotion and all the illumination that is supposed to shine out of the screen of my phone through their IG, FB, Snapchat, Periscope or whatever pages and through the mindful donning of their fits-like-a-glove kind of clothing lines. I don’t want to be “enlightened” by such advertisements, especially not through such false promises.

There are just too many instructions on how to eat, what to drink, what and how to feel, who to wear, where to do yoga and so on that a practice that is supposed to free us from our attachments, only achieves to shackle us further down. When I first started to participate in yoga events I used to come out thinking: “What is wrong with me? Maybe, I missed something. Maybe, I am a cynical person and there is no pleasing me? Maybe I am stupid so I didn’t have the divine experience? What did I do wrong?” I know other people having same doubts, too. Now, I know that there was nothing wrong with me or with them, except maybe the false and exaggerated promises by someone who does not know where to stop.

Is this why we do yoga? Is this why we do anything? Is it fair to be promoted stuff that, in its wake, leaves us feeling inadequate and like rubbish?